Add to ORKGThe paper brings an analytical description of Gavella’s aesthetic essay about the relationship of art and reality in wartime circumstances, as well as summaries of several more of the author’s texts published in the weekly Spremnost between 1942 and 1944. Gavella’s essay is defined by his advocacy of the freedom of creation and the recognition and promotion of art as an extremely powerful spiritual and cognitive activity. It appeared as a criticism and resistance to the opinion that supported the thesis that in wartime only works of the so-called cheerful art should be created: aesthetically, intellectually and cognitively undemanding works that would help the public to forget the horrors of war. In a contents rich and logically clearly wri...